Abstract
Ghana’s mobile phone markets are currently dominated by a Chinese company called Transsion. Based on 7-month ethnographic research, this article examines Transsion’s distribution and marketing practices in Ghana, which are largely labor-intensive, rural-centric, low value-added, and lower-class-oriented. Taking a historical approach, this article reveals that this business strategy originated in China and has been translated to Ghana by a wide variety of translators. By elaborating various translation scenarios, this article demonstrates that translation as a practice, be it cultural, technological, or managerial, is a complicated process with tensions, adaptations, and innovations. As a tech company from the Global South, Transsion provides a critical case to think beyond the urban-centric and high value-added business model of Silicon Valley-type companies.
Introduction
Alhaji is a middle-aged man who runs a mobile phone shop in Kintampo, a small town in the Bono East Region of Ghana. Occupying less than 6 square meters, his shop is packed with 8 glass showcases, displaying a wide range of phone models priced from US$10 to US$100. Walking into his shop feels like entering a sea of red, as you are overwhelmed by the pervasive red advertising materials, most from itel, a low-end brand from a Chinese company called Transsion. Since their cooperation in 2012, Alhaji and itel have gradually built their reputation in this town. Targeting farmers in surrounding villages, Alhaji mainly relies on word-of-mouth marketing to promote his products. Every month, itel salespersons visit him to distribute free marketing materials and collect feedback. When I visited Alhaji in December 2019 after 5 hours by bus and 3 hours by car from Accra, he had just put up a new poster on his door to advertise itel’s big battery models. As part of itel’s “My Power My Hero” campaign, this poster presents an image of a Black Panther-like superhero (see Figure 1), injecting an element of Afrofuturism into this remote town. Very fond of this image, Alhaji said that “it makes my shop look attractive.”
Left: An itel shop in a Ghanaian town (Source: the author); Right: An itel poster (Source: itel’s Facebook page).
Since the colonial era, information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures in Ghana have largely been built for external communication and heavily skewed toward urban areas. In 1990, more than 80% of fixed lines were located in urban Ghana, with 53.6% in the capital Accra; in 2006, about 83% mobile phone users clustered in a few major cities like Accra and Kumasi (Alemna and Sam, 2006; Haggarty et al., 2002). Due to the external orientation and urban bias, both the state and large transnational companies have generally ignored the ICT demands of Ghana’s rural population, leaving them to pirated or secondhand technologies. The main distributors of such technologies are usually informal traders traveling with their suitcases and buying in small quantities, with Mathews’s (2011) documentation of Chungking Mansions traders as a famous example. Since 2000, numerous African traders have traveled to Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions, 1 buying a wide variety of phones – returned, used, refurbished, or copied (Mathews, 2011). As a central node of “low-end globalization,” Chungking Mansions is tightly linked to Third World electronic bazaars in Accra, Lagos, Delhi, Dar es Salaam, etc., creating vibrant spaces for non-elite groups to participate in globalization and digitalization (Mathews, 2011; Schwarz and Eckstein, 2014; Sundaram, 2010). Research about these places often focuses on their pervasive piracy, legal ambiguity, and everyday improvisation, which are usually associated with the so-called “informal economy” (Deka, 2017; Dent, 2012).
My visits to small towns like Kintampo, however, suggested that a profound transformation has been occurring since Chinese companies started providing affordable phones for non-elite users in the Global South. Although urban–rural inequality persists, an increasing number of rural populations are using branded instead of pirated or used phones. If mobile phones are no longer carried by informal traders in their suitcases, how are they distributed to Africa’s non-elite users, not just in cities but also in towns and villages? Why did Chinese companies develop an interest in Africa’s rural markets? Given that China’s market reform since 1978 also generated a strong urban bias in its ICT industry (Hong, 2013), many local companies made a strategic move to exploit China’s rural markets in the 1980s and 1990s (Wen, 2020). Does this represent a unique Chinese approach? Are Chinese companies adopting similar strategies in Ghana? If so, how have they translated these strategies into the Ghanaian context? For rural retailers like Alhaji, why do they prefer itel over others?
To explore these questions, I first trace a Chinese approach of rural distribution and marketing by historicizing China’s ICT industry. Against this background, I then examine how various actors have translated this approach to Ghana. Last, by analyzing various types of translation scenarios, I explain how the practice of translation has transformed local industry and society.
Rural distribution and marketing: a Chinese approach
In his study of rural China, American anthropologist Skinner (1964) treated marketing structures first as spatial and economic systems and then as social and cultural systems. Based on fieldwork in Sichuan province in 1949 and 1950, Skinner (1964) approached China’s rural marketing as part of the country’s historical transformation from a traditional agrarian society to a modern society. After the Communist Party came to power in 1949, rural marketing in China was restricted during a series of political campaigns to build socialism. Viewing the market mechanism as disruptive of community and solidarity, Maoist radicals developed a hostility to market competition and showed a preference for redistribution by establishing state trading companies, joint-ownership enterprises, and cooperative stores (Skinner, 1985).
After 1978, the pro-market reform initiated by Deng Xiaoping greatly increased the legitimacy of selling and advertising in the socialist economy. The new discourse argued that advertising was necessary for China to become modern, scientific, and efficient in catching up with capitalist countries (Stross, 1990). In the 1980s, the political legitimation and policy liberalization not only led to an increase in rural market size, number, and frequency (Skinner, 1985) but also created new rural market actors, including a large number of “township and village enterprises” (TVEs; Putterman, 1997).
As a unique product during China’s transition from the commune system to the market system, China’s TVEs played an important role in the country’s rural industrialization. During 1982–1988, the industrial output of TVEs grew at an average annual rate of 38.2%, much higher than the 9.8% rate for China’s state-owned enterprises (Putterman, 1997). TVEs along with other types of collective enterprises made considerable contributions to China’s ICT production. For instance, Huawei and ZTE originally registered as collectively owned enterprises in Shenzhen in the late 1980s. At a time when large foreign companies dominated China’s urban markets, domestic enterprises like Huawei adopted a growth strategy by starting with less profitable rural markets before they were strong enough to compete in cities. Borrowing Mao’s revolutionary term, scholars have described this strategy as “encircling cities from the countryside” (Wen, 2020).
In 1998, three big multinationals—Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia—accounted for more than 80% share of China’s phone market; this changed dramatically with the rise of local players like Ningbo Bird (or Bird), Xiaxin, and TCL, which obtained 53% of the domestic market share by 2003 (Li and Kozhikode, 2008). Founded in 1992, Bird started as a township enterprise in Zhejiang province and quickly became to a local market leader in the early 2000s. Scholars have ascribed Bird’s rapid growth to its competitive pricing, aggressive marketing strategy, and intensive distribution network (Choi and Nailer, 2005; Li and Kozhikode, 2008). Targeting mid- and low-end markets, Bird mainly sold basic phone models and was more willing to cut prices to gain market share than multinationals. To increase publicity, Bird not only sponsored sports TV shows but also placed numerous wall advertisements in China’s towns and villages. Regarding distribution, when foreign brands built self-owned stores in big cities, Bird established an intensive distribution channel nationwide, especially in lower-tier cities, counties, and towns. In the early 2000s, Bird had about 28 provincial distributors, 30,000 sales outlets, and 450 service centers (Li and Kozhikode, 2008). When the price wars between local firms drove down profit margins, Bird turned to overseas markets for growth. In 2005, Bird became China’s largest exporter of mobile phones, with an annual export volume of 6.11 million units (Deng, 2007). However, the company’s sales started to decline with the rise of shanzhai (copycat) phones in the mid-2000s.
Similar to Bird, shanzhai phone makers adopted an intensive distribution approach to target China’s mid- and low-end markets. Often evading value-added tax and quality testing fees, the prices of shanzhai phones were usually very low, most under RMB¥1000 (US$145). Many shanzhai phones did not obtain a license and often circulated via informal or illegal channels. Shanzhai dealers usually did not spend much on market promotion but relied on distributors to boost sales. For example, the large shanzhai phone maker Tianyu kept a 10% profit margin, leaving the remainder to its distributors and retailers (Hu et al., 2011). Motivated by the high commission from Tianyu, distributors and retailers persuaded low-income customers to buy Tianyu phones instead of over-priced international brands (Hu et al., 2011). It was mainly through word-of-mouth marketing like this that shanzhai phones gained market share.
Benefiting from the regional, if not global, network of “suitcase entrepreneurs” (Benjamin, 2005), many shanzhai phones were distributed to postcolonial cities like Delhi, Lagos, and Accra and then to a large number of small towns and villages in the Global South (Mathews, 2011; Sundaram, 2010). In 2009, 110 million out of 150 million shanzhai phones produced in China were exported (Samsung Economic Research Institute, 2010). As shanzhai phones differ greatly in price and quality, these “China phones” are often perceived as cheap, unreliable, and of poor quality, whether in India or Africa, urban or rural areas.
To summarize, Chinese phone makers tend to adopt a rural market-oriented distribution and marketing approach in their domestic and overseas expansion. This strategy was shaped by China’s unique path of participating in the global ICT industry as a latecomer. The encounter between Chinese phones and Third World rural markets during the late 1990s and early 2000s was largely mediated by informal traders, which expanded access to marginalized populations but produced relatively negative perceptions of Chinese products. This is the larger context when the new generation of Chinese phone brands, like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Transsion, are pursuing their global expansion in recent years.
Research framework and methods
Viewing mobile phones as traveling technologies, this article aims to explore their trajectories when moving from context to context. Deeply shaped by the modernization paradigm, many discussions about technology flows have been dominated by the techno-centric framework of “technology transfer” (Seely, 2003). Aiming for a more nuanced understanding of technology flows, this study proposes “technology translation” as an alternative framework and conceptualizes it as a social-technical project of moving and translating technologies across boundaries. Technology translations can have different layers and dimensions, including technical, social-cultural, organizational, etc. Elsewhere, I have examined the “technical” translations involved in Transsion’s design practices. This article mainly focuses on technology translations at the social-cultural and organizational levels by looking at Transsion’s distribution and marketing practices in Ghana.
Founded in 2006 by former employees of Bird, Transsion is a Shenzhen-based phone company targeting emerging markets. With its three phone brands (itel, Tecno, and infinix), Transsion has gained the largest market share in Africa − 48.7% in 2019 (Wei, 2019), especially in Ghana − 66% in 2019 (personal interview, December 2019). I focus on Transsion’s low-end phone brand itel because it has a stronger presence in Ghana’s rural areas than the two other brands.
This research uses participant observation and semi-structured interviews as the primary research methods. From mid-July to mid-October 2018, I conducted participant observation at Transsion’s Shenzhen headquarters. During these 3 months, I worked as a “special intern” in the itel department: I fulfilled the duties as an intern but received no salary from itel. I informed itel of my future research intentions and was allowed to attend a series of training sessions, meetings, and discussions. After the “internship,” I conducted semi-structured interviews with various Transsion employees. The second part of my fieldwork was conducted in Ghana from September to December 2019, where I visited itel shops, interviewed local dealers, and conducted observations in urban and rural markets, including Accra, Kumasi, Techiman, Sunyani, Kintampo, Wenchi, etc. My field trips to these markets were made possible by “following the thing” (e.g., itel phones) and “following the people” (e.g., itel dealers), two strategies widely used in multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995). I informed all the interviewees of my research purpose and anonymized their names to protect their identity.
Mapping the distribution network in Ghana: a four-level structure
Similar to China’s Huaqiangbei Market and India’s Nehru Place, Ghana also has two bazaars for its phone business: One is Circle Market in the capital Accra, and the other is Adum Market in the second largest city Kumasi. My observations in these two markets present a very different scene from previous writings about Third World bazaars, which often focus on their informality and piracy. Although there exist various types of informal traders selling secondhand or pirated products, they no longer account for the majority of business there. Instead, most phones circulated in Circle and Adum are branded ones like itel, Tecno, infinix, X-Tigi, Samsung, Huawei, etc. Phone shops of different brands, colors, sizes, and shapes have mushroomed in every nook and cranny of these two markets. Every week, a large quantity of phones are shipped to Ghana in containers instead of being carried by informal traders in their suitcases. Since the arrival of companies like Transsion, a more formal and stable distribution network has gradually evolved in Ghana’s phone markets.
According to my fieldwork in Ghana, Transsion divides the Ghanaian markets into five tiers and uses a four-level channel to distribute products (see Figure 2). Using the Ashanti Region as a dividing line, Transsion roughly demarcates Ghana into southern and northern markets. Generally speaking, southern Ghana is more urbanized and affluent, with a small territory but dense population, while northern Ghana is less developed and urbanized, with a large territory but sparse population. Transsion considers Accra and Kumasi as Tier 1 markets and established a branch office in both cities to manage the southern and northern markets, respectively. Tier 2 markets refer to regional hubs like Techiman and Sunyani, while Tier 3 markets include market towns of municipal districts. Tier 4 and Tier 5 markets consist of a large number of small towns and villages. Transsion’s categorization does not strictly parallel Ghana’s administrative division and instead, emphasizes factors like market capacity and distribution logistics rather than administrative functions.
Four-level distribution channel.
Figure 2 shows Transsion’s four-level distribution channel in Ghana. Whenever new products are launched in Ghana, they are first sold to a few “national agents” in large quantities. After the national agents supply the products to “sub-dealers” or “micro-distributors,” they resell the products to wholesalers. Wholesalers further distribute the phones to numerous retailers dispersed in Ghana’s cities, towns, and villages. The phone prices, commissions, and minimum purchase quantities vary from level to level. Usually, when products move downstream in this channel network, the price increases, while the minimum purchase quantity decreases. The commission differs depending on factors like bargaining power.
For Ghana’s phone business in general, there are about 12 national agents, 80 sub-dealers, and 700 wholesalers and retailers (personal interview, September 2019). Regarding itel, it has 3 national agents and 12 sub-dealers. Usually with registered companies based in Accra or Kumasi, national agents and sub-dealers are very influential people in local markets, dealing with large-scale business. The transaction volumes and geographical locations of wholesalers and retailers can vary from case to case. Retailers include formal traders with their own shops and informal ones like street vendors and hawkers. It is possible for a trader to do wholesaling and retailing at the same time, and the line between the two is not always clear in Ghana.
Distributors as translators: translating a distribution approach
According to my interviews with 10 national agents and sub-dealers in Ghana, most started their businesses in the early 2000s as Chungking Mansions traders. For them, the process of introducing Transsion products to Ghana was anything but easy or straightforward. Their stories illustrate different scenarios of translating new products and new distribution strategies to Ghana.
As the biggest itel agent in Ghana, Mr. G, illustrated the first type of translation scenario: I entered the mobile phone business in 2004. I used to travel to Hong Kong twice a month to buy small phones such as Motorola, Sony, Ericson, and Nokia from Chungking Mansions. Maybe a hundred pieces, and then I came back (to Ghana). . . At that time, there were itel and Tecno in Chungking Mansions. They asked me to buy, but I refused because Ghanaians didn’t know them (the brand names) . . . In 2015, the Transsion boss came to my warehouse here in Circle. He saw a lot of different brands and asked me how many phones I could sell in a month. I told him I could sell 15,000. Then he asked his sales representative in Ghana to appoint me as the itel agent. It’s been four years now. I’ve been doing a very good job for Transsion. Now, I’m the number one itel agent. I can sell 30,000 pieces every month.
According to Mr. G, he refused to distribute for Transsion when they met in Chungking Mansions because he worried that the then-unknown brands like itel and Tecno would not sell in Ghana. In his eyes, Motorola and Nokia phones, although used or pirated, had greater value than itel and Tecno. He agreed to work with Transsion in 2015 because by then Transsion’s brands had earned a good reputation in Ghana. In other words, Mr. G did not become a translator for Transsion until he gained enough confidence in Transsion products’ market potential. My interviews with other distributors also revealed that this concern was common during their first encounter with Transsion. This is because, before the arrival of Transsion, a large number of shanzhai phones flooding into Ghana had given Chinese products a very bad reputation. Even now, many of the traders I have interviewed still use “China phones” to refer to the fake phones in the market.
Mr. and Mrs. H were the first itel agents who introduced itel products to Ghana around 2012, and their story represented another type of translation scenario. Recalling the early days of distributing itel phones, Mrs. H said: It was very very difficult at the beginning. I have to persuade my customers. I have to tell them these (itel phones) are good products. Some of them agree to try a few models. Then they go out to the villages. They sell to farmers. If it sells, they will come back . . . (It is through this way that) itel started to pick up.
Many lower-level wholesalers and retailers also confirmed that it took many explanations to persuade their customers to try and trust itel in the early days. Often times, they used the strong battery or multiple SIM cards as itel’s selling points. Without translations like this, distribution would have been impossible in many cases. In this sense, local distributors played a critical role not only in introducing Transsion phones to Ghana but also in changing people’s perceptions of Chinese products.
By working together, Transsion and local dealers built an intensive distribution network across the country with a set of formal or informal rules. Not everyone has equal bargaining power over these rules, and misunderstandings and conflicts are not uncommon. During my interviews with itel’s three national agents in Ghana, I was surprised by their opposite attitudes toward Transsion. For example, Mr. G described Transsion as a reliable and trustworthy partner: Transsion is very loyal to us. That’s why we do business with them. For some other companies, they will ask you to have the capital money before they do business with you. But for Transsion, they don’t care whether you are poor or rich. When they pick you, and you are loyal, they will follow you and assist you. It’s not always in money, but they will support you. When Transsion grows, we grow together, and that will change your life.
When he started distributing itel, Mr. G did not even have a phone shop but only a warehouse in Circle. By 2019, he had founded his own trading company, owning 4 shops and hiring 25 employees. “He rises from nobody to a big man in Ghana. Everybody here in Circle knows him and respects him,” said an itel Chinese manager. The case of Mr. G tells a success story in which a suitcase entrepreneur can become an influential local distributor. This trajectory is not rare among local dealers I interviewed, and quite a few have experienced tremendous changes in their lives by working with Transsion.
For Mr. and Mrs. H, however, it has been a very different story. Although they were the first itel agents in Ghana, they had the slowest business growth over the past few years. As Mrs. H complained, The itel business has no negotiation. You have to pay cash. 100%. No credit. I’m the first person to bring in itel. I have worked with them for 7 years, and they don’t give me any credit!. . . You know these Chinese people, they have targets. They get commission on our products. Anytime we make big order, they get big money. That affects their salary. So, they put pressure on us. They just want to put pressure, put pressure: every month, make forty containers; every week, make order. . . They don’t think about us. They only think of themselves.
Their opposite attitudes toward Transsion came down to that Mr. G could get 40% credit when he purchased itel products, but Mr. and Mrs. H could not get any. According to an itel Chinese manager, this was because when itel asked its agents to solely distribute itel phones, Mr. G agreed, but Mr. and Mrs. H rejected. This demonstrates that if local distributors do not follow itel’s rules or policies, they will not get incentives and might even be punished. Meanwhile, it is also possible for local dealers to take advantage of these rules to expand their business, as shown in the case of Mr. G. Therefore, how the relationship will play out depends on both sides’ business plan and negotiation strategy.
Based on my observation, the Ghanaian side is far from passive but has considerable bargaining power in various ways. For example, in Kumasi, big local dealers came together to found the “Kumasi Mobile Phone Association” (“the Association” hereafter) in 2016. According to Mr. D, who is the president of the Association and a Tecno agent, this is a very strong organization dealing with “both internal and external issues.” Another big wholesaler, Mr. F, also confirmed this: We form this association so that we can control the market. We can uniform the price. For the group members (about 40 by 2019), if someone gets in trouble, we can get together to help the person. . . (For the Chinese), we negotiate with them. If we don’t need you in the market, we can make the decision and get you out of the market. Taking itel for example, if they don’t understand something, if we want to discuss something, we will invite them here, and they will come. We set things up together.
The itel scenario Mr. F described happened once several months before my fieldwork. Unsatisfied with the low profit of itel phones – only GH¢3 (US$0.52) for many feature phone models, the Association threatened to remove itel’s products and oust its promoters from the Kumasi market. In other words, local distributors may quit being translators if the translation reward (e.g., profit) is too small. Members of the Association held a meeting with itel and successfully forced it to compromise. The Transsion managers I talked to also admitted that they had to take the Association’s requests seriously. As a Chinese Tecno manager has said, “Tecno is not strong enough to ignore their demands. We have to rely on them.” Local distributors are important not only because they have local knowledge and social networks but also because local laws, particularly the Ghana Investment Promotion Law (Act 865), forbid foreigners to engage in retail business in Ghana. Therefore, it is impossible, or at least risky, for foreigners to sell goods in Ghana without intermediaries. For example, in recent years, both Circle and Adum have witnessed several conflicts between Ghanaian and Nigerian phone traders. In 2019, claiming that Nigerians disrupted their market, a group of Ghanaians locked the Nigerian traders’ shops and forced them to leave. Either in the case of itel or Nigerians, the Association played an important role in resolving disputes. According to Mr. D, in some cases, the Association can also communicate with the government, offering the group’s opinions about phone-related policies. These demonstrate that local distributors can provide multidimensional translation work for various actors, including foreign traders, local government, dealers, and customers.
Conceptualizing the marketing strategy: “below the line”
Either in China or Ghana, itel employees often use the acronym “BTL” to describe their marketing strategy. “BTL” means “below the line,” the opposite of “ATL,” “above the line.” In the marketing industry, they represent two types of marketing strategy: ATL marketing aims to reach a large number of customers through mass media like TV, while BTL marketing seeks to reach customers directly through offline activities like road shows. The terms ATL and BTL were first used in 1954 after P&G began paying advertising firms separately and at a different rate from suppliers that dealt with more “direct” promotional activities (Baker, 2003). In other words, marketing expenses are classified into different items in the accounting ledger, depending on the nature of these activities (direct or mass media-oriented). This practice of demarcating ATL from BTL is closely related to the division of labor in media production. As Mayer (2011) has critiqued, “the line” indexes the scarcity of so-called “creativity” and “professionalism”: Above-the-line personnel are usually creative professionals engaging in intellectual activities, while below-the-line personnel are usually people who do manual work. From the labor perspective, the discourse of ATL and BTL has justified and reinforced the division of labor within the media industry.
In the global ICT industry, Apple has been viewed as a genius of ATL marketing. From its legendary “1984” Super Bowl ad to the 1997 “Think Different” campaign, Apple’s television ads have played a crucial role in defining its corporate identity (Shields, 2001). Often targeting so-called “creative professionals,” Apple prefers ATL to BTL marketing to reach these elite users. Transsion, however, adopts a different approach to target another market segment: the bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers in emerging markets. Tecno, Transsion’s mid-range brand, does half ATL and half BTL marketing; itel, its low-end brand, spends 90% of its budget on BTL marketing and only 10% on ATL marketing. This is because most types of ATL marketing are too expensive for itel. With high production costs and advertising fees, television ads seldom become a possible option for itel. The two ATL methods itel has used are radio and social media advertising: The former is relatively cheap, while the latter, as one marketing manager has described, is “almost free.” Moreover, most itel customers live in rural areas with limited access to mass media. More than one interviewee admitted that many itel customers did not have TV sets at home, rendering ATL marketing like television ads unnecessary.
In Ghana, itel makes great efforts to gain visibility “below the line.” In Circle and Adum Markets, every available surface has been occupied by eye-catching billboards, displaying the logos and slogans of various brands. In some sense, brand competition has become color competition: Red symbolizes itel, blue represents Tecno, and yellow indicates X-Tigi. In rural areas, itel’s wall advertising is ubiquitous, and in some villages, even farmers’ houses have been painted red by itel. Given that many itel customers are illiterate, itel always uses short and simple marketing slogans for walls and billboards. Two such examples are “Good Price, Good Phone” and “itel, 150 Million People’s Choice.” During new product launches, itel marketers often conduct various types of outdoor marketing campaigns, including exhibitions, road shows, street tours, dance competitions, celebrity performances, sports sponsorship, and so on. These circus-like activities aim to create public spectacles and attract crowds. Every week, itel’s salespersons travel from door to door, sending out marketing materials. It is through such below-the-line activities that itel gains widespread visibility in Ghana’s rural areas.
Marketers as translators: the pleasure and pressure of selling
In Ghana, itel heavily hires local people to create its sales force. For instance, its branch office in Kumasi has about 70 local promoters (most are female), 4 sales reps, 1 promoter supervisor, 1 local manager, and only 1 Chinese manager. Mr. W, the Chinese manager, is an energetic and open-minded 24-year-old young man. He came to Kumasi after graduating from a Chinese university and attending a series of training sessions in Shenzhen. He views his job in Ghana as a great opportunity for self-improvement and fulfillment. In Kumasi, it took him about 1 month to earn the trust and respect of local employees: They didn’t respect me very much when I first came here. They think I’m too young and don’t have experience. I can understand their doubt. But after all, I am a university student. Many local employees only graduate from high school. . . I have skills. I teach them how to do things. It turns out to be right. Last year, our sales increased, and we kicked a lot of shanzhai phones out of the market. My local team did a very good job, and we worked together.
When I met him in October 2019, Mr. W had developed a brotherly relationship with his local employees. They often wore the same itel promotional T-shirts and made jokes about each other. In addition to English, the working language, Mr. G had also picked up some Twi, a local language spoken in the Ashanti Region. For Mr. W and his employees, cultural exchanges happen on a daily basis, and translation has been a crucial aspect in this process. For example, the itel Kumasi office holds a team meeting every Tuesday morning. It usually starts with Mr. W reviewing the previous week’s performance and introducing the current week’s marketing plan and target. Then, Mr. W leaves the meeting to his local team, and the language in the room often switches from English to Twi.
Several years ago, the itel Shenzhen team developed a marketing manual in Chinese and later translated it into English. The manual is widely used to train itel’s sales force in Africa, including sales reps, managers, and promoters. Following the manual’s instructions, promoters have to memorize itel phone specs and selling points, learn how to display products, and work out their sales pitch. Sometimes, promoters need to take a quiz to test their learning outcomes. In Kumasi, I observed several such training sessions during which local employees spoke some Twi, some English, and a little bit of Chinglish that came from the manual. As Ghanaians from different tribes tend to speak different languages, itel promoters often need to further translate the Twi version into other local languages. That is, from the original Chinese version to local versions, the content of the manual may be translated two or three times (Chinese – English – Twi or Chinese – English – Twi – other local languages). As this marketing manual only provides general guidelines instead of step-by-step instructions, local sales teams often need to further develop their own playbooks by engaging with the manual and local knowledge. For example, rural markets in Ghana are usually periodic rather than continuous: The “market day” lasts for only 1 day and varies from town to town. Instead of ignoring such local logics, itel marketers in Ghana adjust their strategies and schedules to suit the periodicity of rural markets, which requires translation efforts from both Chinese and Ghanaians, usually by working together.
For Chinese employees like Mr. W, working for Transsion has given them the first opportunity to go abroad, take a plane, attend a traditional Ghanaian wedding, and experience African food and music. With an average age of 28, Transsion’s Chinese employees are more willing to explore new cultures than the older generation. For many local employees, getting exposed to Chinese language and culture has also been a fresh experience. At Transsion, outstanding local employees will be rewarded a free Chinese course offered by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, and a few will also be sent to Transsion’s Shenzhen headquarters for training and visiting. In 2019, Transsion also built a new platform called the Marketing Institute of Transsion (MIT) to facilitate internal communication of marketing skills gained from various employees and countries. Through their frequent interactions, a group of Transsioners have emerged as “cultural translators,” mediating various exchanges between Chinese and Africans.
In recent years, with China’s domestic market becoming extremely saturated, more and more Chinese companies are coming to Africa for growth opportunities. Thus, the phone business in Ghana has become increasingly competitive, putting intense pressure on local dealers and salespersons. In response to this, itel has increased both the frequency and width of its marketing campaign. Every week, two sales reps travel to towns and villages, pushing their retailers to display promotional materials and increase sales. Every month, the Chinese manager conducts one or two follow-up visits to check on progress. In October 2019, when I asked an itel sales rep about their travel plan, he opened his Google map on his phone and showed me the current location of his colleague: See? Right now, he is in a village of Kofiase, distributing small gifts to our retailers. He just finished Mampong yesterday. When he finishes Kofiase, he moves to Kyekyewere. When he finish all the villages, he will come back and send us the data. Every village he visits, he will collect some feedback. . . We have to travel a lot. It used to be twice a week. But right now, it is four times a week. Because we really have to penetrate these villages right now.
On 5 December 2019, I followed Mr. W and his local sales rep during their visits to the northern region. Traveling by a small rented car with a broken air conditioner, these two young men in their 20s visited 13 phone shops in two remote towns on a superhot day, asking shop owners for their concerns about the business trends, their evaluations of itel’s performance, and their expected support from the itel office. Table 1 shows their detailed schedule I recorded.
One-day trip of Mr. W and his sales rep.
As Ghana’s northern towns are widely dispersed, itel employees often have to spend a large amount of time on the road, making very tedious and laborious trips. When they arrive in the towns, they visit the phone shops one by one, doing a lot of talking and making observations. They collect feedback and offer suggestions. In one case, a Kintampo retailer complained to Mr. W that itel 5606 was so quickly sold out that he could not get a single piece after visiting Kumasi several times. Mr. W promised to increase the stock and told him which sub-dealer he should buy from. In another case, Mr. W warned a Wenchi shop owner that her retail prices were too high, which was not good for either itel or her own business in the long run. On our way back to Kumasi, Mr. W said that he was very proud of what they had achieved. The last time when he visited, these shops had been “all yellow” because they were dominated by X-Tigi’s marketing materials. But this time, “they all turned red” (see Figure 1) after his team redecorated these shops with itel’s marketing materials, which use a lot of red.
Translating Afrofuturism: imagining alternative African futures
With itel’s marketing materials spreading to Ghana’s towns and villages, they have not only reshaped the rural landscape but also presented new ways of imagining African futures. As mentioned earlier, itel’s “My Power My Hero” campaign conducted for its P33/P33 Plus smartphones widely used an image of a black superhero. During our interview, Mr. Q, the designer who created this image, denied that this idea was inspired by Black Panther. Instead, he related this hero to the diaosi discourse in China. Roughly translated as “losers,” diaosi is an online buzzword people often use to criticize the lack of upward mobility in China and could be understood as the Chinese version of “we are the 99%” (Szablewicz, 2014). As Mr. Q remarked, For me, this is not Black Panther. It is a black hero. It could be anyone. In China, we often say that every diaosi can have a dream. We want to tell our African customers that they can have power and they can dream.
Another marketing manager Mr. S also interpreted this image in a similar way: Black Panther is the King of Wakanda who has all the high-tech stuff. You can use it to advertise a fancy car. No problem. But I think there is a gap between it and our brand image. Our customers are like China’s diaosi. We want to send the message that everyone can have a dream, and everyone can become a hero.
By linking this image to the diaosi discourse, itel Chinese marketers provide a class-based interpretation. Materially speaking, given that many Ghanaian villages still do not have access to electricity, itel P33 and P33 Plus, both priced under US$100 and with a battery capacity of 4000 to 5000 mAh, provide an affordable way to supply power. Moreover, by depicting an Afrofuturist hero, itel also aims to empower its customers by affirming their “capacity to aspire” (Appadurai, 2004), which is significant given popular culture’s history of excluding black people. In Ghana, people tend to interpret this image from the perspective of race instead of class. Mr. K, a local poster designer in Kumasi said: I think it is a very good poster. I think they use the right person for the poster. They use black people. The “super” (element) is good. Like the Superman. I really like it when it comes here. . . For the black heroes, (we have) only Black Panther. [Me: You watched the movie?]. Yes. I really like it. He (Black Panther) stands for blacks. You won’t get any other black heroes. Only Black Panther in that movie. It talks more about Africa. Wakanda and something else. Only about Africa.
For Mr. K, the significance of this image lies in its “blackness”: That the hero is a black man means a lot to him. Underlying this interpretation is his frustration over the representations of Africa in popular culture, which are either missing or distorted. Speaking to the stereotype of Africa being poor, chaotic, and backward, this itel poster provides a counter-representation of a black man, who is cool, fashionable, and futurist. Although it is not without its problems (e.g., male-centered), such representation gives young people like Mr. K both symbolic and emotional empowerment. Moreover, by Afrofuturism, I do not only mean black hero images but broadly define it as black voices with “other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come” (Nelson, 2002). Thus, the process of translating Afrofuturism often involves reflections on and imaginations of how technology intersects with black experiences and identities. Its cry for possible alternative futures does not always stay at the symbolic level but may involve social actions in a broader context.
In Ghana, mobile phones and the technologies behind them are still viewed by many as an important marker of modernization and progress. More than once, my conversations with big local distributors have been brought to the topic of “Africa and technology”: What technology can do to Africa and what Africa can do to technology. As Mr. G, the largest itel agent, once said, Do you know that Ghana and South Korea gained independence in the same year? 1957
2
. Samsung once invited me to South Korea, visiting its office and factory. I can never forget that trip. I was shocked by the gaps between our two countries. . . Now, I work with Chinese. We are good partners. But I also know that most of the profit goes to China instead of me. Because China has technology. What I have learned from Chinese is that you can never be strong without technology.
Taking this sentiment one step further, the Tecno agent Mr. D decided to establish his own phone brand. Over the past few years, he has visited Shenzhen many times, directly communicating with designers and factories. By 2019, he had launched two feature phone models whose sales volume was still small but increasing. Believing that Ghana deserves a better future, Mr. D gives himself 5 years to pursue his dream of technological independence. Through learning by translating, creative translators like Mr. D have been transforming their relationship with both the “original writer” (Transsion) and the “text” (technology). What Mr. D represents is a small group of Ghanaian technological nationalists who are unsatisfied with being merely a “translator” for Chinese and who want to move up the value chain through technological learning and innovation. First as Chungking Mansions traders, then as Transsion translators, local distributors like Mr. D are gradually transforming into “writers,” writing about not only mobile phones but also the future of their nation. Mr. D may fail, and Ghana may not become a “Wakanda,” but the process of translation makes it possible to imagine and practice alternative futures for Africa.
Conclusion
Starting with the story of Alhaji, I depicted various layers of a rural retailer’s engagements with a Chinese brand (itel), including itel as a material object, as a reliable brand and partner, and as a source of affect and inspiration. To explain what it means and how it has happened, I traced a Chinese approach of rural distribution and marketing by historicizing its ICT industry from (1) the TVEs in the 1990s, (2) the shanzhai phone makers in the early 2000s, and (3) the globalization of Chinese phone companies since the early 2000s. Against this background, I elaborated how various translators, including distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and marketers, have translated this approach to Ghana.
This article finds that, by trekking to Ghana’s deprived rural areas, Transsion and its local translators adopt a labor-intensive, rural-centric, low value-added, and lower-class- oriented approach in their distribution and marketing practices. As an ICT company from the Global South, Transsion provides a critical case to think beyond the urban-centric and high value-added business model of Silicon Valley-type companies. Shaped by the structural inequality of the global ICT industry, Chinese phone makers made a strategic move to secure Third World rural markets and invested considerable time and effort in cultivating such markets. If the link from Bird to Transsion demonstrates the possibility of translating such an approach from one developing country to another, two critical factors have made this translation possible: One is their similar experience of building their ICT industry as latecomers, and the other is Transsion’s inclusion of a wide variety of translators offering their creative labor and local knowledge.
What we see from the Transsion case is not a linear “transfer” of Chinese technologies and knowledge. Instead, by elaborating various translation scenarios, this article shows that, translation, be it cultural, technological, or managerial, is a complicated process with tensions, adaptations, and innovations. In developing their marketing playbooks, Transsion and its translators engaged with not only Chinese and Western knowledge (e.g., ATL vs BTL) but also local knowledge (e.g., the market day). Although many of their translation efforts still contain aspirations for modernity, Western modernity is no longer the only reference point. Increasingly, creative translators like Mr. D are not just referencing China’s development experience but also articulating their own versions of development. This suggests that translation as a practice may create new space for imaging and practicing alternative futures. However, how it will play out in different contexts remains an open question to be addressed by future empirical research.
Footnotes
Correction (August 2025):
Article updated to include Note 2 “In fact, South Korea gained independence in 1948 instead of 1957. While Mr. G got the facts wrong, his perception of the technological gaps between Ghana and South Korea is still revealing.” in both the main text and Notes section.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
